Monday, January 18, 2016

Pro-Biafra Protests: The Hoffer Principle

By Tiko Emmanuel Okoye

Most Nigerians can hardly understand that Biafra is not just a location or geographic expression
but a phenomenon as far Ndigbo are concerned. The declared
intention of then military Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon, to reintegrate Ndigbo
into the fabric of the Nigerian society at the end of the civil war with his
3R’s programme (Reconciliation, Rehabilitation and Reconstruction), ended up just being a mere pipe dream.

How could there be reconciliation, rehabilitation and
reconstruction when Ndigbo who fled to safety had their homes in Port Harcourt and its environs classified as
‘abandoned properties’ and seized without any monetary compensation and with
active government support? When the government abruptly changed its currency
just to impoverish Ndigbo with stacks of pre-war Nigerian currency? When returning
Ndigbo
were not reinstated in their previous positions even as the government ruled
that they should be considered as having ‘resigned’ from their posts?

When every man was given a paltry twenty pounds
irrespective of the money he/she had in the bank or the amount of pre-war
Nigerian currency and Biafran currency they owned? When the Nigerian government
hastily embarked on an indigenization policy even as erstwhile Igbo middle and
upper classes were deliberately schemed out through impoverishment? When the
entire Southeast lacked infrastructure and no single federal industry was in
existence for decades?

When one considers the lot of Ndigbo more than 45 years
after the civil war ended, one can readily concede that Nigeria is yet to become an
equal-opportunity nation as far as we are concerned. The least number of states
in the other five geopolitical zones is six – with the Northwest having as many
as seven – but the Southeast has only five. The high opportunity cost of this
deliberate attempt to suppress their political development can be seen in the
disparity between the number of our elected representatives and that of other
zones.

*Jonathan

And of the three major tribes in Nigeria that constitute the WAZOBIA
tripod, only the Igbo are yet to produce an elected president. The gross
injustice that has been meted to – and continues to be meted against – Ndigbo
in this nation cries to high heavens.

Whatever Ndigbo have achieved individually
and collectively is solely based on their industry and can-do spirit.

Despite tremendous odds and hurdles deliberately hurled in our
paths by the ‘System,’ Ndigbo remain unbowed and undeterred
in our business pursuits. Statistics show that outside the Southeast zone Ndigbo
are the second most populous group of persons after the indigenous population
in any state of Nigeria.
These qualities ought to combine to make the Igbo ethnic nationality a very
potent political force in the nation where we have sadly allowed ourselves to
be cornered into playing a cameo role as “the beautiful bride” to every other
ambitious presidential candidate.

It is only in the area of politics that Ndigbo have transformed
into underachievers. We seem to have literally taken Greek mathematician
Archimedes’ cry – “Give me where to
stand, and I will move the earth” – to mean that we have to beg the rest of
Nigeria
to gift us political power. Power is taken and hardly given. The problem with Ndigbo
seems to be the existence of a crop of leaders solely interested in what they
can grab from the system using the rest of us as bargaining chips. It is a
shame that Ndigbo elite are yet to fully comprehend that it is due to
their inability to provide the right kind of leadership that that has
culminated in the emergence of the likes of Nnamdi Kanu.

*Kanu

For crying out loud, in a zone where you have an Alex Ekwueme, a
Peter Obi, an Ike Ekweremadu, an Orji Uzor Kalu, a Theophilus Orji, a Sam Egwu
and their likes, it is an Nnamdi Kanu, driven by youthful exuberance, that
majority of Ndigbo have chosen to respect and kowtow to! I almost puked
when my attention was drawn to a speech senate deputy president Ike Ekweremadu
reportedly gave at a recent Southeast PDP caucus meeting in Enugu, where he
seemed to be more concerned with reaping political capital out of the raging
protests threatening to bring the economy of the Southeast to a grinding halt,
rather than helping to quell it.

His speech was spiced with ominous references to traders in
Alaba International Market and Onitsha Main Market, among others, waking up in
six months to discover to their chagrin that they have no wares to sell (presumably
due to Buhari’s ‘economic mismanagement’). Ekweremadu’s vacuous remarks are
doubtlessly aimed at stoking the embers of the pro-Biafra street protests and
gaining maximum leverage from heightened anti-Buhari sentiments at a time the
fortunes of the PDP are nosediving in the wake of revolting disclosures of how
top members of the party looted the national treasury at will.

My take is that the present tactic of using uncontrollable mass
street protests to draw worldwide attention to the plight of Ndigbo
in Nigeria
is wrong-headed. I worry too that Nigerians may soonest get tired of the
‘melodrama’ and ask Ndigbo to leave the Nigerian federation for our Utopian Biafra.
And then what? Everyone – from the masses of unemployed youths thronging the
streets who know no better to the elite in the Southeast – comprising
politicians, religious leaders, traditional institutions and captains of
business and industry – will end up being a sorry loser.

Ndigbo twice voted for PDP and
Jonathan – “without regrets and apologies,” as we are wont to brag, but despite
such a massive support not even a kilometre of our decrepit infrastructure was
rehabilitated in the six years Jonathan held sway as president. But all of a
sudden we are up in arms demanding that Buhari must perform a miracle within
six months of assuming office! Those hypocritically shouting themselves hoarse
over Biafra today had ironically supported a non-Igbo candidate and rejected
Dim Chukwemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, a Biafran war hero who ran on the ticket of the
Igbo-dominated All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), each of the three times
he contested the presidential election.

They are largely the same ones now claiming that PDP should be
supported because it is the party of Brother Jona, while APC should be
preposterously villified because it is the party of Enemy Mahmoud. The more I
consider it, the more it seems to me to be a replay of the Eric Hoffer
principle. The American philosopher posited that “We (human beings) probably have a greater love for those we support
than those who support us (because) our vanity carries more weight than our
self-interest.” The only change I can regrettably make as far as Ndigbo
are concerned in the present scheme of things is to replace ‘probably’ with
‘foolhardily’!